US Stages 'Historic' Island Defense Drills Amid Growing China Threat
Source: Newsweek
Published Dec 09, 2024 at 4:44 AM EST
The United States and two of its allies in the Indo-Pacific region are conducting a trilateral island defense drill, countering threats posed by China.
Exercise Yama Sakura 87, which means "mountain cherry blossom" in Japanese, kicked off on Friday and is scheduled to run for nine days. More than 7,000 military members from the U.S., Australia and Japan are participating in the drill in multiple locations across three allied nations.
This is the first time the Yama Sakura, an annual exercise in Japan that began in 1982, is being conducted concurrently with the U.S. Army's command post exercise Warfighter, marking a "historic milestone" and validating joint operational capabilities across the Pacific theater, the U.S. military said.
Key highlights of the exercise included joint training in outlying island defense scenarios, with enhanced focus on expeditionary advanced base operations—referring to the use of mobile forces from austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore in a maritime area. Under a U.S. defense concept, Japan, which has five main islands and 14,120 remote islands, forms a north-south blockade with Taiwan and the Philippines against China, seeking to leverage their territories to contain the Chinese military in the Pacific Ocean.
Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/us-stages-historic-island-defense-drills-amid-growing-china-threat-1997468